In Aurangabad, India, the state government is pursuing the possible construction of a desalination plant near Mumbai to ameliorate the “perennial water scarcity” in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra state.^[1]  Years of limited rainfall, crop failure, and insufficient social support services has spurred a suicide epidemic among Marathwada’s farmers.  In 2015—when Marathwada reported the highest post-Monsoon rainfall deficit in India—more than 1,100 farmers committed suicide across the region’s eight districts (among 3,000 suicides across the state).^[2]  On a weekly basis, between 20 and 30 suicides were reported in the region.^[3]  In 2014, by comparison, 569 farmers committed suicide, and in 2013, 207 farmers committed suicide.^[4] 

Kishar Tiwari, the head of the Farmers Distress Management Task Force appointed by the state government, has urged the government to redouble its efforts to create confidence among farmers that government schemes to help them can indeed help them.  These benefits include: food security plans, crop insurance schemes, health plans, readily available loans, and counselling sessions.^[5] 

Maharashtra’s state officials report they have dealt with drought from three different causes: poor rain, ground water depletion, and overall drop in yield.^[6]   Many places in Marathwada receive rainfall once in two weeks, or once in a month, and reservoir levels have fallen to an unprecedented low.  Key dams are entirely depleted, including Aurangabad’s Jayakwadi dam—on which 305 villages and most of Marathwada’s irrigation projects depend. 

The proposed desalination plant would desalinate water in Tarapur or Dahanu (near Mumbai), and then transport the water through a pipeline into the Godavari River, to flow downstream into the Jayakwadi dam.  Thus far, the Union and state governments have both expressed interest in the proposal to build the plant.^[7] 

Earlier this month, on World Water Day, the White House hosted a high-level debate on the topic of desalination in Washington, D.C.^[8]  The event featured speakers from public and private sectors, and was arranged in partnership with the United Nations World Water Day—to “‘raise awareness of water issues and potential solutions in the United States, and to catalyze ideas and actions to help build a sustainable and secure water future through innovative science and technology.’”^[9] 

^{The White House Rose Garden, blanketed in snow (Credit: Peter Souza/ Official White House Photo)}

At the summit, Evoqua announced that it has successfully completed a pilot of its electrochemical desalination modules at the U.S. government’s Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility, located in Alamogordo, New Mexico.^[10]  The company reported it would double the amount of water it treats, and pledged $50 million (USD) to research and develop the United States’ water technologies.^[11]

In Chile, the mining firm White Mountain Titanium Corporation has entered a $2 million “debt funding agreement” for a desalination plant at the company’s Cerro Blanco mine.^[12]  In exchange for the funding, White Mountain has granted Nexo Water, a subsidiary of the private equity firm Nexo, the exclusive right to fund and develop the proposed facility.  Once operations commence at the mine, the two parties will split equity and share proceeds from sales of the desalinated water.^[13]